| 506 | 506 |
The subject is not yet exhausted, and has to be examined from still other aspects.
Whether Milton’s grandiose description of the three Days’ Battle of the Angels of Light against those of Darkness justifies the suspicion that he must have heard of the corresponding Eastern tradition — it is impossible to say. Nevertheless, if not himself in connection with some Mystic, then it must have been through some one who had obtained access to the secret works of the Vatican. Among these there is a tradition of the “ Beni Shamash ” — the “ children of the Sun ” — concerning the Eastern allegory, with far more minute details in its triple version, than one can get either from the Book of Enoch, or the far more recent Revelation of St. John about the “ Old Dragon ” and his various Slayers, as just shown.
It seems inexplicable to find, to this day, authors belonging to Mystical Societies who yet continue in their preconceived doubts as to the “ alleged ” antiquity of the “ Book of Enoch.” Thus, while the author of the “ Sacred Mysteries among the Mayas and Quichés ” is inclined to see in Enoch an Initiate converted to Christianity (! !) (vide p. 16), the English compiler of Eliphas Lévi’s works — “ The Mysteries of Magic ” — is also of a like opinion. He remarks that : “ Outside the erudition of Dr. Kenealy, no modern scholarship attributes any more remote antiquity to the latter work (the ‘ Book of Enoch ’) than the fourth century B.C.” ( Biograph. and Critical Essay, p. xxxviii. ). Modern scholarship has been guilty of worse errors than this one. It seems but yesterday that the greatest literary critics in Europe denied the very authenticity of that work, together with the Orphic Hymns, and even the Book of Hermes or Thot, until whole verses from the latter were discovered on Egyptian monuments and tombs of the earliest dynasties. The opinion of Archbishop Laurence is quoted elsewhere.
The “ Old Dragon ” and Satan, now become singly and collectively the symbol of, and the theological term for, the “ Fallen Angel,” is not so described either in the original Kabala (the Chaldean “ Book of Numbers ”) or in the modern. For the most learned, if not the greatest of modern Kabalists, namely Eliphas Lévi, describes Satan in the following glowing terms : — “ It is that Angel who was proud enough to believe himself God ; brave enough to buy his independence at the price of eternal suffering and torture ; beautiful enough to have adored
| 507 | 507 |
himself in full divine light ; strong enough to reign in darkness amidst agony, and to have built himself a throne on his inextinguishable pyre. It is the Satan of the Republican and heretical Milton. . . . . the prince of anarchy, served by a hierarchy of pure Spirits (! !) . . . .” (Histoire de la Magie, 16-17) This description — one which reconciles so cunningly theological dogma and the Kabalistic allegory, and even contrives to include a political compliment in its phraseology — is, when read in the right spirit, quite correct.
Yes, indeed ; it is this grandest of ideals, this ever-living symbol — nay apotheosis — of self-sacrifice for the intellectual independence of humanity ; this ever active Energy protesting against Static Inertia — the principle to which Self-assertion is a crime, and Thought and the Light of Knowledge odious. It is — as Eliphas says with unparalleled justice and irony — “ this pretended hero of tenebrous eternities, who, slanderously charged with ugliness, is decorated with horns and claws, which would fit far better his implacable tormentor — it is he who has been finally transformed into a serpent — the red Dragon.” But Eliphas Lévi was yet too subservient to his Roman Catholic authorities ; one may add, too jesuitical, to confess that this devil was mankind, and never had any existence on earth outside of that mankind. *
In this, Christian theology, although following slavishly in the steps of Paganism, was only true to its own time-honoured policy. It had to isolate itself, and to assert its authority. Hence it could not do better than turn every pagan deity into a devil. Every bright sun-god of antiquity
— a glorious deity by day, and its own opponent and adversary by night, named the Dragon of Wisdom, because it was supposed to contain the germs of night and day — has now been turned into the antithetical shadow of God, and has become Satan on the sole and unsupported authority of despotic human dogma. After which all these producers of light and shadow, all the Sun and the Moon Gods, were cursed, and thus the one God chosen out of the many, and Satan, were both anthropomorphised. But theology seems to have lost sight of the human capacity for discriminating and finally analysing all that is artificially forced upon its reverence. History shows in every race and even tribe, especially in the Semitic nations, the natural impulse to exalt its own tribal deity above all others to the hegemony
* What devil could be possessed of more cunning, craft and cruelty than the “ Whitechapel murderer, ” “ Jack the Ripper ” of 1888, whose unparalleled blood-thirsty and cool wickedness led him to slaughter and mutilate in cold blood seven unfortunate and otherwise innocent women ! One has but to read the daily papers to find in those wife and child-beating, drunken brutes (husbands and fathers !), a small percentage of whom is daily brought before the courts, the complete personifications of the devils of Christian Hell !
| 508 | 508 |
of the gods ; and proves that the God of the Israelites was such a tribal God, and no more, even though the Christian Church, following the lead of the “ chosen ” people, is pleased to enforce the worship of that one particular deity, and to anathematize all the others. Whether originally a conscious or an unconscious blunder, nevertheless, it was one. Jehovah has ever been in antiquity only “ a god among other Gods,” (lxxxii. Psalm). The Lord appears to Abraham, and while saying, “ I am the Almighty God,” yet adds, “ I will establish my covenant to be a God unto thee ” (Abraham), and unto his seed after him (Gen. xvii. 7) — not unto Aryan Europeans.
But then, there was the grandiose and ideal figure of Jesus of Nazareth to be set off against a dark background, to gain in radiance by the contrast ; and a darker one the Church could hardly invent. Lacking the Old Testament symbology, ignorant of the real connotation of the name of Jehovah — the rabbinical secret substitute for the ineffable and unpronounceable name — the Church mistook the cunningly fabricated shadow for the reality, the anthropomorphized generative symbol for the one Secondless Reality, the ever unknowable cause of all. As a logical sequence the Church, for purposes of duality, had to invent an anthropomorphic Devil — created, as taught by her, by God himself. Satan has now turned out to be the monster fabricated by the “ Jehovah-Frankenstein,” — his father’s curse and a thorn in the divine side — a monster, than whom no earthly Frankenstein could have fabricated a more ridiculous bogey.
The author of “ New Aspects of Life ” describes the Jewish God very correctly from the Kabalistic stand-point as “ the Spirit of the Earth, which had revealed itself to the Jew as Jehovah ” (p. 209). “ It was that Spirit again who, after the death of Jesus, assumed his form and personated him as the risen Christ ” — the doctrine of Cerinthius and several Gnostic sects with slight variation, as one can see. But the author’s explanations and deductions are remarkable : “ None knew . . . better than Moses . . . and so well as he how great was the power of those (gods of Egypt) with whose priests he had contended,” he says . . . “ the gods of which Jehovah is claimed to be the God ” (by the Jews only). “ What were these gods, these Achar of which Jehovah, the Achad, is claimed to be the God . . . by overcoming them ? ” the author asks ; to which our Occultism answers : “ those whom the Church now calls the Fallen Angels and collectively Satan, the Dragon, overcome, if we have to accept her dictum, by Michael and the Host, that Michael being simply Jehovah himself, one of the subordinate Spirits at best.” Therefore, the author is again right in saying : “ The Greeks believed in the existence of . . . daimons. But . . . they were anticipated by the Hebrews, who held that
| 509 | 509 |
there was a class of personating spirits which they designated demions, ‘ personators.’ Admitting with Jehovah, who expressly asserts it, the existence of other gods, which were personators of the One God, were these other gods simply a higher class of personating spirits, which had acquired and exercised greater powers ? And is not personation the Key to the mystery of the Spirit state ? But once granting this position, how are we to know that Jehovah was not a personating Spirit, a Spirit which arrogated to itself that it was, and thus became, the personator of the one unknown and unknowable God ? Nay, how do we know that the Spirit calling itself Jehovah, in arrogating to itself his attributes did not thus cause its own designation to be imputed to the One who is in reality as nameless as incognizable ? ” (pp. 144-145.)
Then the author shows “ that the Spirit Jehovah is a personator ” on its own admission. It acknowledged to Moses “ that it had appeared to the patriarchs as the God Shaddai ” . . . . and “ the god Helion ” . . . .
With the same breath it assumed the name of Jehovah ; and it is on the faith of the assertion of this personator that the names El, Eloah, Elohim, and Shaddai, have been read and interpreted in juxtaposition with Jehovah as “ the Lord God Almighty.” Then when the name Jehovah became ineffable . . . . the designation Adonai, “ Lord ” was substituted for it, and “. . . . it was owing to this substitution that the ‘ Lord ’ passed from the Jewish to the Christian ‘ Word ’ and ‘ World ’ as a designation of God ” (p. 146). And how are we to know, the author may add, that Jehovah was not many spirits personating even that seemingly one — Jod or Jod-He ?
But if the Christian Church was the first to make the existence of Satan a dogma, it was because, as shown in Isis, the Devil — the powerful enemy of God ( ? ! ! ) had to become the corner stone of the pillar of the Church. For, as a Theosophist, M. Jules Baissac, truly observes in his “ Satan ou le Diable ” (p. 9) : “ Il fallait éviter de paraître autoriser le dogme du double principe en faisant de ce Satan créateur une puissance réelle, et pour expliquer le mal originel, on profère contre Manes l’hypothèse d’une permission de l’unique tout Puissant.” * The choice and policy were unfortunate, anyhow. Either the personator of the lower god of Abraham and Jacob ought to have been made entirely distinct from the mystic “ Father ” of Jesus, or — the “ Fallen ” Angels should have been left unslandered by further fictions.
Every god of the Gentiles is connected with, and closely related to,
* After the polymorphic Pantheism of some Gnostics came the esoteric dualism of Manes, who was accused of personifying Evil and creating of the Devil a God — rival of God himself, We do not see that the Christian Church has so much improved on that exoteric idea of the Manicheans, for she calls God her King of Light, and Satan, the King of Darkness, to this day.
| 510 | 510 |
Jehovah — the Elohim ; for they are all One Host, whose units differ only in name in the esoteric teachings. Between the “ Obedient ” and the “ Fallen ” Angels there is no difference whatever, except in their respective functions, or rather in the inertia of some, and the activity of others among those “ Dhyan Chohans ” or Elohim who were “ commissioned to create,” i.e., to fabricate the manifested world out of the eternal material.
The Kabbalists say that the true name of Satan is that of Jehovah placed upside down, for “ Satan is not a black god but the negation of the white deity,” or the light of Truth. God is light and Satan is the necessary darkness or shadow to set it off, without which pure light would be invisible and incomprehensible. * “ For the initiates,” says Eliphas Lévi, “ the devil is not a person but a creative Force, for Good as for Evil.” They (the Initiates) represented this Force, which presides at physical generation, under the mysterious form of God Pan — or Nature : whence the horns and hoofs of that mythical and symbolic figure, as also the Christian “ goat of the Witches’ Sabbath.” With regard to this too, Christians have imprudently forgotten that the goat was also the victim selected for the atonement of all the sins of Israel, that the scape-goat was indeed the sacrificial martyr, the symbol of the greatest mystery on earth — the Fall into generation. Only the Jews have long forgotten the real meaning of their (to the non-initiated) ridiculous hero, selected from the drama of life in the great mysteries enacted by them in the desert ; and the Christians never knew it.
Eliphas Lévi seeks to explain the dogma of his Church by paradoxes and metaphors, but succeeds very poorly in the face of the many volumes written by pious Roman Catholic demonologists under the approbation and auspices of Rome, in this nineteenth century of ours. For the true Roman Catholic, the devil or Satan is a reality ; the drama enacted in the sidereal light according to the seer of Patmos — who desired, perhaps, to improve upon the narrative in the “ Book of Enoch ” — is as real, and as historical a fact as any other allegory and symbolical event in the Bible. But the Initiates give an explanation
* To quote in this relation Mr. Laing in his admirable work “ Modern Science and Modern Thought ” ( p. 222, 3rd Ed.) : “ From this dilemma (existence of evil in the world) there is no escape, unless we give up altogether the idea of an anthropomorphic deity, and adopt frankly the Scientific idea of a First Cause, inscrutable and past finding out ; and of a universe whose laws we can trace, but of whose real essence we know nothing, and can only suspect, or faintly discern a fundamental law which may make the polarity of good and evil a necessary condition of existence.” Were Science to know “ the real essence,” instead of knowing nothing of it, the faint suspicion would turn into the certitude of the existence of such a law, and the knowledge that this law is connected with Karma.
| 511 | 511 |
which differs from that given by Eliphas Lévi, whose genius and crafty intellect had to submit to a certain compromise dictated to him from Rome.
Thus, the true and uncompromising Kabalists admit that, for all purposes of Science and philosophy, it is enough that the profane should know that the great magic agent called by the followers of the Marquis de St. Martin — the Martinists — astral light, by the mediæval Kabalists and Alchemists the Sidereal Virgin and the Mysterium Magnum, and by the Eastern Occultists Æther, the reflection of Akâsa — is that which the Church calls Lucifer. That the Latin scholastics have succeeded in transforming the universal soul and Pleroma, the vehicle of Light and the receptacle of all the forms, a force spread throughout the whole Universe, with its direct and indirect effects, into Satan and his works, is no news to any one. But now they are prepared to give out to the above-mentioned profane even the secrets hinted at by Eliphas Lévi without adequate explanation ; for the latter’s policy of veiled revelations could only lead to further superstition and misunderstanding. What, indeed, can a student of Occultism, a beginner, gather from the following highly poetical sentences of Eliphas Lévi, as apocalyptic as the writings of any of the Alchemists ?
“ Lucifer, the Astral Light . . . . is an intermediate force existing in all creation, it serves to create and to destroy, and the Fall of Adam was an erotic intoxication which has rendered his generation a slave to this fatal light . . . every sexual passion that overpowers our senses is a whirlwind of that light which seeks to drag us towards the abyss of death, Folly. Hallucinations, visions, ecstasies are all forms of a very dangerous excitation due to this interior phosphorus (?). Thus light, finally, is of the nature of fire, the intelligent use of which warms and vivifies, and the excess of which, on the contrary, dissolves and annihilates. Thus man is called upon to assume a sovereign empire over that (astral) light and conquer thereby his immortality, and is threatened at the same time with being intoxicated, absorbed, and eternally destroyed by it. This light, therefore, inasmuch as it is devouring, revengeful, and fatal, would thus really be hell-fire, the serpent of the legend ; the tormented errors of which it is full, the tears and the gnashing of teeth of the abortive beings it devours, the phantom of life that escapes them, and seems to mock and insult their agony, all this would be the devil or Satan indeed.” (Histoire de la Magie, p. 197).
There is no wrong statement in all this ; nothing save a superabundance of ill-applied metaphors, as in the application of Adam — a myth — to the illustration of the astral effects. Akâsa — the astral light * — can be defined in a few words ; it is the universal Soul, the Matrix of the Universe, the “ Mysterium Magnum ” from which all that exists is born by separation or differentiation. It is the cause of existence ; it
* Akâsa is not the Ether of Science, as some Orientalists translate it.
| 512 | 512 |
fills all the infinite Space ; is Space itself, in one sense, or both its Sixth and Seventh principles. * But as the finite in the Infinite, as regards manifestation, this light must have its shadowy side — as already remarked. And as the infinite can never be manifested, hence the finite world has to be satisfied with the shadow alone, which its actions draw upon humanity and which men attract and force to activity. Hence, while it is the universal Cause in its unmanifested unity and infinity, the Astral light becomes, with regard to Mankind, simply the effects of the causes produced by men in their sinful lives. It is not its bright denizens — whether they are called Spirits of Light or Darkness — that produce Good or Evil, but mankind itself that determines the unavoidable action and reaction in the great magic agent. It is mankind which has become the “ Serpent of Genesis,” and thus causes daily and hourly the Fall and sin of the “ Celestial Virgin ” — which thus becomes the Mother of gods and devils at one and the same time ; for she is the ever-loving, beneficent deity to all those who stir her Soul and heart, instead of attracting to themselves her shadowy manifested essence, called by Eliphas Lévi — “ the fatal light ” which kills and destroys. Humanity, in its units, can overpower and master its effects ; but only by the holiness of their lives and by producing good causes. It has power only on the manifested lower principles — the shadow of the Unknown and Incognizable Deity in Space. But in antiquity and reality, Lucifer, or Luciferus, is the name of the angelic Entity presiding over the light of truth as over the light of the day. In the great Valentinian gospel Pistis Sophia (§ 361) it is taught that of the three Powers emanating from the Holy names of the Three Τριδυνάμεις, that of Sophia (the Holy Ghost according to these gnostics — the most cultured of all), resides in the planet Venus or Lucifer.
Thus to the profane, the Astral Light may be God and Devil at once —
* Says Johannes Tritheim, the Abbot of Spanheim, the greatest astrologer and Kabalist of his day : — “ The art of divine magic consists in the ability to perceive the essence of things in the light of nature (astral light), and by using the soul-powers of the spirit to produce material things from the unseen universe, and in such operations the Above and the Below must be brought together and made to act harmoniously. The spirit of Nature (astral light) is a unity, creating and forming everything, and acting through the instrumentality of man it may produce wonderful things. Such processes take place according to law. You will learn the law by which these things are accomplished, if you learn to know yourself. You will know it by the power of the spirit that is in yourself, and accomplish it by mixing your spirit with the essence that comes out of yourself. If you wish to succeed in such a work you must know how to separate Spirit and Life in Nature, and, moreover, to separate the astral soul in yourself and to make it tangible, and then the substance of the soul will appear visibly and tangibly rendered objective by the power of the spirit.” — (Quoted in Dr. Hartman’s “ Paracelsus.”)
| 513 | 513 |
Demon est Deus inversus : that is to say, through every point of Infinite Space thrill the magnetic and electrical currents of animate Nature, the life-giving and death-giving waves, for death on earth becomes life on another plane. Lucifer is divine and terrestrial light, the “ Holy Ghost ” and “ Satan,” at one and the same time, visible Space being truly filled with the differentiated Breath invisibly ; and the Astral Light, the manifested effects of the two who are one, guided and attracted by ourselves, is the Karma of humanity, both a personal and impersonal entity : personal, because it is the mystic name given by St. Martin to the Host of divine Creators, guides and rulers of this planet ; impersonal, as the Cause and effect of universal Life and Death.
The Fall was the result of man’s knowledge, for his “ eyes were opened.” Indeed, he was taught Wisdom and the hidden knowledge by the “ Fallen Angel,” for the latter had become from that day his Manas, Mind and Self-consciousness. In each of us that golden thread of continuous life — periodically broken into active and passive cycles of sensuous existence on Earth, and super-sensuous in Devachan — is from the beginning of our appearance upon this earth. It is the Sutrâtma, the luminous thread of immortal impersonal monadship, on which our earthly lives or evanescent Egos are strung as so many beads — according to the beautiful expression of Vedantic philosophy.
And now it stands proven that Satan, or the Red Fiery Dragon, the “ Lord of Phosphorus ” (brimstone was a theological improvement), and Lucifer, or “ Light-Bearer,” is in us : it is our Mind — our tempter and Redeemer, our intelligent liberator and Saviour from pure animalism. Without this principle — the emanation of the very essence of the pure divine principle Mahat (Intelligence), which radiates direct from the Divine mind — we would be surely no better than animals. The first man Adam was made only a living soul (nephesh), the last Adam was made a quickening Spirit * : — says Paul, his words referring to the building or Creation of man. Without this quickening spirit, or human Mind or soul, there would be no difference between man and beast ; as there is none, in fact, between animals with respect to their actions. The tiger and the donkey, the hawk and the dove, are each one as pure and as innocent as the other, because irresponsible. Each follows its instinct, the tiger and the hawk killing with the same unconcern as the donkey eats a thistle, or the dove pecks at a grain of corn. If the Fall had the significance given to it by theology ; if that
* The real original text of 1 Corinthians, rendered Kabalistically and esoterically would read (in Chap. xv., verses 44 and 45) : “ It is sown a soul body (not ‘ natural ’ body), it is raised a spirit body.” St. Paul was an Initiate, and his words have quite a different meaning when read esoterically. The body “ is sown in weakness (passivity) ; it is raised in power ” (43) — or in spirituality and intellect.
| 514 | 514 |
fall occurred as a result of an act never intended by nature, — a sin, how about the animals ? If we are told that they procreate their species in consequence of that same “ original sin,” for which God cursed the earth — hence everything living on it — we will put another question. We are told by theology, as by Science, that the animal was on earth far earlier than man ? We ask the former : How did it procreate its species, before the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, of the Good and the Evil, had been plucked off ? As said : “ The Christians — far less clear-sighted than the great Mystic and Liberator whose name they have assumed, whose doctrines they have misunderstood and travestied, and whose memory they have blackened by their deeds — took the Jewish Jehovah as he was, and of course strove vainly to reconcile the Gospel of Light and Liberty with the Deity of Darkness and Submission.” (“ War in Heaven.”) *
But, it is sufficiently proven now that all the soi-disant evil Spirits who are credited with having made war on the gods, are identical as personalities ; moreover, that all the ancient religions taught the same tenet save the final conclusion, which latter differs from the Christian. The seven primeval gods had all a dual state, one essential, the other accidental. In their essential state they were all the “ Builders ” or Fashioners, the Preservers and the rulers of this world, and in the accidental state, clothing themselves in visible corporeality, they descended on the earth and reigned on it as Kings and Instructors of the lower Hosts, who had incarnated once more upon it as men.
* By Godolphin Mitford, later in life, Murad Ali Bey. Born in India, the son of a Missionary, G. Mitford was converted to Islam, and died a Mahomedan in 1884. He was a most extraordinary Mystic, of a great learning and remarkable intelligence. But he left the Right Path and forthwith fell under Karmic retribution. As well shown by the author of the article quoted “ The followers of the defeated Elohim, first massacred by the victorious Jews (the Jehovites), and then persuaded by the victorious Christians and Mohamedans, continued nevertheless. . . Some of these scattered sects have lost even the tradition of the true rationale of their belief — to worship in secrecy and mystery the Principle of Fire, Light, and Liberty. Why do the Sabean Bedouins (avowedly Monotheists when dwelling in the Mohamedan cities) in the solitude of the desert night yet invoke the starry ‘ Host of Heaven ’ ? Why do the Yezidis, the ‘ Devil Worshippers,’ worship the ‘ Muluk-Taoos ’ — The ‘ Lord Peacock ’ — the emblem of pride and of hundred-eyed intelligence (and of Initiation also), which was expelled from heaven with Satan, according to an old Oriental tradition ? Why do the Gholaites and their kindred Mesopotamo-Iranian Mohamedan Sects believe in the ‘ Noor Illahee ’ — the Light of the Elohim — transmitted in anastasis through a hundred Prophet Leaders ? It is because they have continued in ignorant superstition the traditional religion of the ‘ Light Deities whom Jahveh overthrew ’ (is said to have overthrown rather) ; for by overthrowing them he would have overthrown himself. The ‘ Muluk-Taoos ’ — is Maluk — ‘ Ruler ’ as is shown in the foot-note. It is only a new form of Moloch, Melek, Molech, Malayak, and Malachim ” — Messengers, Angels, etc.
| 515 | 515 |
Thus, esoteric philosophy shows that man is truly the manifested deity in both its aspects — good and evil, but theology cannot admit this philosophical truth. Teaching the dogma of the Fallen Angels in its dead-letter meaning, and having made of Satan the corner-stone and pillar of the dogma of redemption — to do so would be suicidal. Having once shown the rebellious angels distinct from God and the Logos in their personalities, the admission that the downfall of the disobedient Spirits meant simply their fall into generation and matter, would be equivalent to saying that God and Satan were identical. For since the Logos (or God) is the aggregate of that once divine Host accused of having fallen, it would follow that the Logos and Satan are one.
Yet such was the real philosophical view of the now disfigured tenet in antiquity. The Verbum, or the “ Son,” was shown in a dual aspect by the Pagan Gnostics — in fact, he was a duality in full unity. Hence, the endless and various national versions. The Greeks had Jupiter, the son of Chronos, the Father, who hurls him down into the depths of Kosmos. The Aryans had Brahmâ (in later theology) precipitated by Siva into the Abyss of Darkness, etc., etc. But the fall of all these Logoi and Demiurgi from their primitive exalted position, had in all cases one and the same esoteric signification in it ; the curse — in its philosophical meaning — of being incarnated on this earth ; an unavoidable rung on the ladder of cosmic evolution, a highly philosophical and fitting Karmic law, without which the presence of Evil on Earth would have to remain for ever a closed mystery to the understanding of true philosophy. To say, as the author of the Esprits Tombés des Paiens (p. 347) does, that since “ Christianity is made to rest on two pillars, that of evil (πονηρο͂υ), and of good (ἀγαθοῦ) ; on two forces, in short, ἀγαθαὶ καὶ κακαὶ δυναμεῖς : hence, if we suppress the punishment of the evil forces, the protecting mission of the good Powers will have neither value nor sense ” — is to utter the most unphilosophical absurdity. If it fits in with, and explains Christian dogma, it obscures the facts and truths of the primitive wisdom of the ages. The cautious hints of Paul have all the true esoteric meaning, and it took centuries of scholastic casuistry to give them the present false colouring in their interpretation. The verbum and Lucifer are one in their dual aspect ; and the “ Prince of the Air ” (princeps aeris hujus) is not the “ God of that period,” but an everlasting principle. If the latter was said to be ever circling around the world — qui circumambulat terram — the great Apostle referred simply to the never-ceasing cycles of human incarnations, in which evil will ever predominate unto the day when Humanity is redeemed by the true divine Enlightenment which gives the correct perception of things.
It is easy to disfigure vague expressions written in dead and long-
| 516 | 516 |
forgotten languages, and palm them off as truths and revealed facts on the ignorant masses. The identity of thought and meaning is the one thing that strikes the student in all the religions which mention the tradition of the fallen Spirits, and in those great religions there is not one that fails to mention and describe it in one or another form. Thus, Hoang-Ty, the great Spirit, sees his Sons, who had acquired active wisdom, falling into the valley of Pain. Their leader, the Flying Dragon, having drunk of the forbidden ambrosia, fell to the Earth with his Host (Kings). In the Zend Avesta, Angra Mainyu (Ahriman), surrounding himself with fire (the “ Flames ” — vide supra) seeks to conquer the Heavens, * when Ahura Mazda, descending from the solid Heaven he inhabits, to the help of the Heavens that revolve (in time and space, the manifested worlds of cycles including those of incarnation), and the Amshaspends, “ the seven bright Sravah,” accompanied by their stars, fight Ahriman, and the vanquished Devas fall to the Earth along with him. (Acad. des Inscrip., Vol. xxxix., p. 690 ; see Vendidad, Farg. xix., iii.) In the Vendidad the Daêvas are called “ evil-doing,” and shown to rush away “ into the depths of the world of hell,” or matter. (47.) This is an allegory showing the Devas compelled to incarnate, once that they have separated themselves from their parent essence, or, in other words, after the unit had become a multiple, after differentiation and manifestation.
Typhon the Egyptian, Python, the Titans, the Suras and the Asuras, all belong to the same legend of Spirits peopling the Earth. They are not “ demons commissioned to create and organize this visible universe,” but fashioners (the “ architects ”) of the worlds, and the progenitors of man. They are the Fallen angels, metaphorically — “ the true mirrors of the Eternal Wisdom.”
What is the absolute and complete truth as well as the esoteric meaning about this universal myth ? The whole essence of truth cannot be transmitted from mouth to ear. Nor can any pen describe it, not even that of the recording Angel, unless man finds the answer in the sanctuary of his own heart, in the innermost depths of his divine intuitions. It is the great SEVENTH MYSTERY of Creation, the first and the last ; and those who read St. John’s Apocalypse may find its shadow lurking under the seventh seal. . . . It can be represented only in its apparent, objective form, like the eternal riddle of the Sphinx. If the latter threw herself into the sea and perished, it is not because Œdipus had unriddled the secret of the ages, but because, by anthropomorphizing the ever-spiritual and the subjective, he had
* So does every Yogi and even Christian : one must take the Kingdom of heaven by violence — we are taught. Why should such a desire make of any one a devil ?
| 517 | 517 |
dishonoured the great truth for ever. Therefore, we can give it only from its philosophical and intellectual planes, unlocked with three keys respectively — for the last four keys of the seven that throw wide open the portals to the mysteries of Nature are in the hands of the highest Initiates, and cannot be divulged to the masses at large — not in this, our century, at any rate.
The dead letter is everywhere the same. The dualism in the Mazdean religion, was born from exoteric interpretation. The holy “ Airyaman,” “ the bestower of weal,” invoked in the prayer called Airyama-ishyô, is the divine aspect of Ahriman, “ the deadly, the Daê of the Daêvas ” (Farg. xx., 43), and Angra Mainyu is the dark material aspect of the former. “ Keep us from the Hater, O Mazda and Armaita Spenta ” (Vendidad Sâdah), has, as a prayer and invocation, an identical meaning with “ Lead us not into temptation,” and is addressed by man to the terrible Spirit of duality in man himself. For (Ahura) Mazda is the spiritual, divine, and purified man, and Armaita Spenta, the Spirit of the Earth or materiality, is the same as Ahriman or Angra Mainyu in one sense.
The whole of the Magian or Mazdean literature — or what remains of it — is magical, occult, hence allegorical and symbolical — even its “ mystery of the law ” (see the Gâtha in Yasna XLIV.). Now the Mobed and the Parsi keep their eye on the Baresma during the sacrifice, the divine twig off Ormazd’s “ tree ” having been transformed into a bunch of metallic rods ; and wonder why neither the Amesha-Spentas, nor “ the high and beautiful golden Haômas, nor even their Vohu-Mano (good thoughts), nor their Râta (sacrificial offering),” help them much. Let them meditate on the “ tree of Wisdom,” and study, assimilating one by one, the fruits thereof. The way to the tree of eternal life, the white Hôma, the Gaokerena, is through one end of the earth to the other ; and Haôma is in heaven as it is on earth. But to become once more a priest of it, and a healer, man must heal himself before he can heal others.
This proves once more that the so-called “ myths,” in order to be at least approximately dealt with in any degree of justice, have to be closely examined from all their aspects. In truth, every one of the seven Keys has to be used in its right place, and never mixed with the others, if we would unveil the entire cycle of mysteries. In our day of dreary soul-killing materialism, the ancient priest Initiates have become, in the opinion of our learned generations, the synonyms of clever impostors, kindling the fires of superstition in order to obtain an easier sway over the minds of men. This is an unfounded calumny, generated by scepticism and uncharitable thoughts. No one believed more in Gods — or, we may call them, the Spiritual and now invisible Powers, or Spirits,
| 518 | 518 |
the noumena of the phenomena — than they did ; and they believed just because they knew. If, initiated into the Mysteries of Nature, they were forced to withhold their knowledge from the profane, who would have surely abused it, such secrecy was undeniably less dangerous than the policy of their usurpers and successors. The former taught only that which they well knew. The latter, teaching what they do not know, have invented, as a secure haven for their ignorance, a jealous and cruel Deity, who forbids man to pry into his mysteries under the penalty of damnation. As well they may, for his mysteries can at best be only hinted at in polite ears, never described. Turn to King’s Gnostics, “ Description of the Plates ” (Plate H), and see for yourself what was the primitive Ark of the Covenant, according to the author, who says : “ There is a Rabbinical tradition that the cherubin placed over it were represented as male and female, in the act of copulation, in order to express the grand doctrine of the Essence of Form and Matter, the two principles of all things. When the Chaldeans broke into the sanctuary and beheld this most astounding emblem, they naturally enough exclaimed, ‘ Is this your God, of whom you boast that He is such a lover of purity ?’ ” (p. 441.)
King thinks that this tradition “ savours too much of Alexandrian philosophy to demand any credit,” to which we demur. The shape and form of the wings of the two cherubim standing on the right and left sides of the Ark, these wings meeting over the “ Holy of Holies,” are an emblem quite eloquent in itself, besides the “ holy ” Jod within the ark ! The Mystery of Agathadæmon, whose legend states, “ I am Chnumis, Sun of the Universe, 700,” can alone solve the mystery of Jesus, the number of whose name is 888.” It is not the key of St. Peter, or the Church dogma, but the narthex — the wand of the candidate for initiation — that has to be wrenched from the grasp of the long-silent Sphinx of the ages. Meanwhile ——–
The augurs, who, upon meeting each other, have to thrust their tongues into their cheeks to suppress a fit of laughter, may be more numerous in our own age than they ever were in the day of Sylla.